


A Marriage of Inconvenience

by SenEolas



Category: Irish Mythology, Táin Bó Cúailnge, Ulster Cycle
Genre: Gen, House-Hunting, Marriage of Convenience, Shenanigans, millennial struggles, not the same universe as In Loco Parentis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:55:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27088231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenEolas/pseuds/SenEolas
Summary: Cú Chulainn and Emer are finally getting married... except there's a slight problem. Cú Chulainn is already married. To Láeg.Inspired by two prompts:From incorrect-ulster-cycle: "Five years ago, I married my best friend. Emer is still mad about it, but Láeg and I were drunk and we thought it was funny, so..."From being a millennial trying to find somewhere to live: "Oh, this one's nice! Oh wait. No sharers. Ugh. You know, we should just get married. The millennial marriage of convenience..."
Relationships: Cú Chulainn & Láeg mac Riangabra, Cú Chulainn/Emer, Láeg mac Riangabra & Cormac Connlonges
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	A Marriage of Inconvenience

**Author's Note:**

> This does not take place in the same universe as In Loco Parentis, although they do have similarly chaotic vibes. In this universe, Cú Chulainn and Láeg are roughly the same age.

_Now_

Emer moves her bishop with a single decisive movement. “Checkmate.”

Cú Chulainn looks at the board. Looks at his checkmated king. Looks at her face, serious except for the slight smile tugging at her lips, however hard she’s trying to hide her triumph. Looks at the sunlight sparkling through her hair like a soft halo.

“Emer,” he says, “will you marry me?”

In response she flicks his king with her index finger and sends it toppling onto the board. “Well, if I’d known that’s how you’d respond I’d have beaten you months ago.” Her smile is threatening to grow into a grin.

“I mean it. I was going to ask you after I beat your dad at Scrabble, only—”

“Only that evening didn’t exactly end well,” Emer agrees.

“And you said—”

She cuts him off. “Cú,” she says, “I would love to. But there’s just one problem.”

He frowns. She had a lot of conditions, when they originally talked about this, but he’s pretty sure he’s met them all twice over. They haven’t exactly rushed into this. “What’s that?”

“You’re still legally married to Láeg.”

Oh, shit.

*

_Five years earlier_

“No sharers,” proclaims Láeg, downing another shot and closing the tab. Househunting is made slightly more bearable by the addition of alcohol and the world’s most depressing drinking game – drink every time they don’t accept sharers, drink every time you get ghosted by a letting agent, drink every time you see the word ‘spacious’ on a room that’s essentially a shoebox, until eventually you’re too pissed to care about the fact that you don’t have anywhere to live as of two weeks from now.

“This is ridiculous.” Cú Chulainn leans over and takes the laptop from him, re-opening the tab as though he thinks Láeg would lie about that. “It has two double bedrooms. What kind of family is looking for two double bedrooms?”

“Search me.” The screen is beginning to swim in front of his eyes. Possibly too many shots, but that’s the housing market for you. “Maybe they think house shares are just a front for organised crime. I wonder if it would help if we pointed out to them that you’re the least organised person I’ve ever met.”

“You can’t tell them that. We’re trying to reassure them that we’re… what was it? _Mature and responsible tenants._ ”

“Why does it matter? No one will rent to us anyway.” Láeg twists sideways so that he can stretch out across the sofa, squeezing his legs behind Cú Chulainn’s back. “I mean, I guess we could lie and say we’re a couple, but I’m not sure what we’d have to do to convince them.”

“Hmm.” Cú Chulainn picks up the almost-empty vodka bottle and drains it. It’s shitty off-brand vodka that is probably pickling both of their livers as they speak, but it’s the only thing that makes this process something other than an extended panic attack. “Maybe we should get married.”

“A millennial marriage of convenience.” Láeg ponders the idea. “Only if you wear a dress.”

Cú Chulainn’s expression turns crafty. “They’d have to rent it to us then. No grounds to turn us away.”

“But siiiir,” says Láeg, in a plaintive tone, “you wouldn’t deprive two newlyweds of a home, would you?”

“Oh my dear boy,” answers Cú Chulainn, pitching his voice an octave lower than normal and affecting a plummy accent. “Of course I couldn’t possibly turn such nice young men away. You know, we donate a great deal of money to the Pride parade each year, we want people to know that we, well, that we greatly admire, you know… the gays.”

Láeg breaks character and cackles. “Really? You want to play on their straight guilt to get us somewhere to live?”

“Well, I don’t know about you, but I would rather not spend the next six months on my uncle’s sofa, and your mother already made it clear she wasn’t expecting to take you back.” Somehow Cú Chulainn becomes _more_ articulate when he’s drunk, enunciating each word with precision – although it’s clear from the expression on his face that it’s requiring a considerable degree of concentration.

He also has a point. Láeg doesn’t want to spend the next six months on Conchobar’s floor, and his mother _might_ kill him if he moves home again. “Then what the fuck. Let’s do it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Let’s get married.” It has the hazy appeal of a drunken decision but no matter how many angles he looks at it from, it doesn’t stop seeming like a good plan. “Let’s see them hit us with _no sharers_ after that, bitch.”

“Ever the romantic,” says Cú Chulainn, and retrieves the laptop, muttering to himself as he types in a search. “How… to… get… married… quickly…”

“Surely you know someone who can off—offishy—do the legal stuff.” Lying down was probably a mistake; the alcohol’s going to his head. “Someone in that enormous family of yours must be a priest, right?” A bolt of inspiration: “What about Cathbad?”

Cú Chulainn snorts. “Yeah, good luck convincing my grandad to marry us. He’d never agree.”

“But he _could_ , right?”

“He could. But he wouldn’t.”

Láeg considers this. It’s probably true, although his inebriated mind can’t quite pull together the memories he’d need as evidence to support this viewpoint. He does, however, dredge up another consideration: “What about Emer?”

“Emer can’t officiate. Unless she got one of those online licenses. You can do that, right? I feel like that’s a—”

“I meant,” interrupts Láeg, each word taking more effort to enunciate than he’d like, “how will Emer feel about us getting married?”

Cú Chulainn flaps a hand casually. “She’ll understand. She knows how much househunting sucks.”

He doesn’t seem concerned. It’s hard to judge whether that would still be the case if he were sober. Láeg vaguely considers the idea of, you know, actually _consulting_ Emer, but that feels like an additional complication and his brain quickly yeets it down the priority list. “I guess we can just, like, get divorced once we’ve signed the lease.” That’s easy enough, right? No drawbacks. This seems like a better idea all the time. “Or when we’ve moved out. Or whatever.”

“Damn, we haven’t even tied the knot yet and you’re already thinking about divorce? I’m wounded.”

Láeg attempts to lift his head and look blearily at Cú Chulainn. “If anything, you’re the one who would divorce _me_. You have options. I have—”

“Drunken melancholy,” finishes his friend. “Anyway, I thought you were marrying Cormac for tax reasons.”

“Only if we’re still single when we’re forty.”

“You will be,” says Cú Chulainn, and is _just_ drunk enough not to be able to dodge when Láeg lobs a pillow in his approximate direction. It misses, but it’s the thought that counts. “We could put out a – a Craigslist ad? Does Craigslist even still exist?”

This is the kind of existential question that is beyond Láeg’s current capacity to answer. “Doesn’t one of Naoise’s brothers have a – a thingy. A license? He got it off the internet when Dee and Naoise eloped. Maybe it’s still valid.”

“Aindle’s still in Scotland,” says Cú Chulainn gloomily. “Not sure if it’s legal for him to marry us over Zoom.”

“Ugh.” Láeg is running out of ideas. “Well, we can just like… go to the courthouse? Does that cost money? I have no idea how getting married works.” With feeling, he adds, “I’m too drunk for this shit.”

Cú Chulainn closes the laptop. “We’ll look it up in the morning,” he says. “Then you’ll be too hungover for this shit.”

“And you won’t?”

“I’m immune to hangovers.”

“That’s a fucking lie.”

“That’s no way to talk to you – your husband.”

“We’re not married yet,” Láeg points out.

“Fine. Your fiancé.” Cú Chulainn flops backwards, basically crushing Láeg’s legs in the process. It can’t be comfortable, with a pair of kneecaps digging into his spine, but he doesn’t seem to care. “Tomorrow, we’ll get married. And _then_ we will find a flat.”

“And then we will find a flat,” Láeg agrees. “ _No sharers._ Fucking watch us.”

*

_Now_

“What I don’t understand is how you guys never got divorced.”

“Conall, this isn’t funny.”

“I disagree, I think it’s fucking hilarious. How long have you been married now?”

Cú Chulainn stares at the ceiling and wishes for patience. “Five years. Apparently.”

“Aww. Congrats.”

“Conall, just tell me the quickest way we can get divorced without it being a whole big deal, legally, or I will hang up on you.”

“And then what? Also, why did you call _me_?”

He’s asking himself the same question. Why _did_ he expect actual helpfulness from his cousin? “I thought you and several of your wives might have advice for me.”

“Ouch.” Conall doesn’t sound genuinely offended, though. “Well, first off, what does Láeg have to say about all this. I mean, is he down with getting divorced?”

“Is he – of course he’s okay with getting divorced, that was always the plan.”

“Have you _asked_ him?”

He… hasn’t, actually. He got home from his date with Emer last night and Láeg was already asleep in the other room of the two-bed flat that they’ve been nicely settled in for half a decade. _No sharers._ Hell of a reason to get married. But it worked, didn’t it? And they’ve been model tenants, for the most part. Sure, they’re irresponsible in other areas of their lives – they’re still sharing a shitty car after Cú Chulainn crashed his – but the flat’s in better condition than it was when they moved in.

Also, the landlord sends them a _happy pride!_ card every June, which was funny the first time and hilarious every year after that.

In hindsight, he probably should have remembered that they were married.

It was just – one of those things. A little detail that fades into the background. He’s probably been ticking the wrong box on forms for years.

“Shit,” he says, forgetting Conall’s still on the phone. “I think I’ve been paying too much tax.”

“You pay _tax_?” says Conall incredulously.

“Fuck off.”

“No, but seriously, that is considerably more of a surprise than the fact that you’re somehow _accidentally married to Láeg,_ I mean, you guys have been an old married couple since you were eleven, but—”

“I’m genuinely hurt that you’d think I’d commit tax evasion.”

“Oh, no,” says Conall hastily. “No, I’m surprised you _earn_ enough. I mean, what do you even do all day, anyway?”

“Apparently, I have a full time role being insulted by my cousins.” Feels like time for this conversation to be over. “I gotta talk to Láeg. Thanks for offering precisely zero useful advice, Conall.”

“Any time,” says his cousin cheerfully. “You know where to find me. Please don’t call me again.”

*

_Five years earlier_

“What happened to wearing a dress?” asks Láeg, although he has to admit the lurid three-piece suit looks weirdly good on Cú Chulainn. It should, by all rights, be hideous. Somehow he makes it work.

“Couldn’t find one that fitted on short notice.” Cú Chulainn adjusts his lapels. “What’s your excuse?”

“I look good in a suit,” Láeg replies. “Wouldn’t want to deprive you of that.”

“Hm.”

“You both look exceedingly dapper,” Cormac assures them. He’s here as witness, mostly because he’s the only one of their friends who wasn’t busy today, and because he seemed like the least likely to laugh at them for the idea. He actually took it very well. Mostly because he doesn’t want them crashing on his father’s floor for any longer than is strictly necessary, either, and will do whatever he can to aid them in their househunting plight.

He’s also wearing tight sequinned trousers and an enormous yellow shirt that makes him look slightly like a duck, but neither of them is going to mention that, since they need him to make this whole thing, you know, legal.

“Not having second thoughts?” he says cheerfully. “Now that you’re sober, or whatever?”

“Sober is a strong word to use,” says Láeg carefully. He’s not drunk. Not exactly. But in a court of law he doubts they’d find him fully in control of his faculties. “But sure. Let’s do this.”

Cú Chulainn tugs on his purple pin-striped waistcoat. “Absolutely. Let’s get married.”

*

_Now_

“You finally asked Emer to marry you? I’m proud of you.” Láeg is cooking when Cú Chulainn breaks the news, an eviscerated sweet pepper lying abandoned on the chopping board. He does, at least, remember to put the knife down before he offers a high five. “So how did that go? She said yes, I presume.”

“Yes,” admits Cú Chulainn, hanging his jacket over the back of one of the chairs by the breakfast bar. “But that’s not the point. There’s a problem.”

“Don’t tell me. Her dad’s gonna make things complicated again. I thought you _dealt_ with all that?”

“No, it’s not that, we did.” He fiddles with the salt-cellar, watching Láeg return to his worryingly enthusiastic vegetable-chopping. Most of the pepper does, at least, end up in the roasting dish. “It’s… well. Láeg, I want a divorce.”

Láeg drops the knife and has to leap backwards before his feet meet a terrible fate. “You what?”

“We’re still married. Legally speaking. I can’t marry Emer unless we get a divorce.”

Láeg’s mouth drops open. “Oh, _shit_. We are, aren’t we?”

“Also, I’ve definitely been paying the wrong amount of tax, and I don’t know about you, but—”

“HR definitely think I’m single,” admits Láeg mournfully. “Hence the well-meaning but excruciatingly awkward interrogation I faced at the last Christmas party after I dragged Cormac along as my plus-one just so that I wouldn’t have to go alone.”

“I told you I’d go with you—”

“You had to go to Emer’s, remember?”

He does remember. And the mention of Cormac is dislodging a few other memories, too. “How did we all forget this? How did _Cormac_ forget this? I swear he was there.”

Láeg shrugs and resumes slicing his vegetables. “Who says he forgot? Maybe he was just waiting for us to notice.”

That sounds like Cormac. Although given the chaos of his life the last few years and the number of times he’s moved house, it’s possible it slipped his mind. “You don’t seem offended that I want a divorce?”

“Offended?” says Láeg, and Cú Chulainn is abruptly reminded that his flatmate – _husband_ – is holding a knife. “No, I’m not offended. I always knew a day would come when you would throw me over for some pretty young thing…”

“Emer is literally older than you.”

“I knew from the day I met you that you’d break my heart, Cúcán, but you know what I thought to myself? I thought, _this is a timeless romance that will be worth the pain, Láeg._ And the day you proposed to me—”

“I’m not sure I technically proposed to you. I feel like it was a mutual decision.”

“—the day you proposed to me, I knew it could never last, but I thought I should seize my temporary happiness with both hands and take what I could get, because I might never get a better offer. So what if you were only using me for your own benefit?”

“It was absolutely for both of our benefits to be able to have somewhere to live.”

“Better to be used,” Láeg continues melodramatically, as though Cú Chulainn hasn’t spoken, “than to be forgotten, I thought. Better to take what I was offered instead of pining for more. And so I always knew this day would come. Also, I’m keeping the car.” He tips the rest of the chopped peppers into the roasting dish. “Take it or leave it. Final offer.”

“It is your car,” Cú Chulainn admits grudgingly, though the idea of having to take the _bus_ is making him reconsider the whole thing. “And, I mean, I’m sure the landlord won’t kick you out if we get divorced. Though if I move in with Emer, you’ll need a new flatmate.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Láeg waves his hand vaguely, still holding the knife. Cú Chulainn ducks swiftly out of the blade’s path. “Now get out of my kitchen, oh cruel and unloving husband, and go call a lawyer or something.”

*

_Five years earlier_

“And of course, this would make a lovely guest bedroom,” says the letting agent.

“Guest bedroom?” says Cú Chulainn.

Láeg elbows him. “Right, yeah. Because we’ll be sharing the master bedroom. Because we’re married.” He gives the letting agent a charming smile and hopes it conveys something along the lines of _delighted newlywed adjusting to married life,_ and not _broke twenty-something embroiled in a dubiously legal deception for the purposes of finding somewhere to live_.

“Oh, right,” says Cú Chulainn, peering around the guest bedroom as though he gives a shit beyond the fact that it isn’t actively gross like their old place. “Yeah, maybe we can have Emer to stay.”

Láeg hopes that his laugh sounds like a cough. “We’ll take it,” he tells the letting agent. “How soon can we move in?”

*

_Now_

“Has there ever been a best man so uniquely positioned to comment on a groom’s qualities as a husband?” says Láeg, a wicked twinkle in his eye and a half-drained glass of champagne in one hand. Cú Chulainn resists the urge to put his head in his hands. “After all, until a week ago, he was _my_ husband.”

The room breaks out into knowing laughter – those of their friends who are in on the backstory – and confused murmuring – those who aren’t, which includes those of Emer’s family she tolerated well enough to invite.

“Now, I wouldn’t say he was the ideal husband. He never remembered our anniversary. Even his proposal was, at best, lacklustre—”

“It was a _mutual decision_.”

“—and he’d frequently forget we were married at all. But at least he left me the car in the divorce.” More laughter. The other half of the room has adopted a look of polite confusion, as though sitting through a skit they lack the cultural context to appreciate. “But we had five happy years together in the flat I now can’t afford to rent, so thanks for that, you bastard.” Láeg raises his glass. “May you and Emer have many more than that, Cúcán.”

It’s the most sincere thing he’s said since he stood up, which means whatever happens next is going to be…

“And while I’ve got you all here,” continues Láeg, with a sly smile, “there’s something important I need to say.” His expression becomes grave, but Cú Chulainn can see the shit-eating grin just _waiting_ to emerge. “Cormac,” he says very seriously, turning to him, “I couldn’t help but notice your lease is coming to an end, and so, since I have been so cruelly repudiated and in the spirit of great decisions everywhere, I have to ask: will you marry me?”

Láeg manages to dodge the pastry Cormac throws at him.

He does not, however, succeed in avoiding the glass of champagne Emer upends over his head.


End file.
